


More Than One Thing

by kibbleboy



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:07:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23796637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kibbleboy/pseuds/kibbleboy
Summary: "Let me tell you what I do know: I am more than one thing, and not all of those things are good."- Richard Siken+++multi-chaptered fic following jaime’s pov from season 3 onwards. mostly canon compliant until 8x05, mostly show canon with a handful of book canon sprinkled in for flavor. deals with jaime’s psyche and the effect brienne had on it. there may be some inconsistencies, because i wrote this for fun after not writing anything for a year, but i hope it’s still worth your while. enjoy x
Relationships: Jaime Lannister & Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 11
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: THERE ARE HOLES IN THIS. the ending is done, the vibe is complete, but there are a few pieces very obviously missing in the middle. i posted it because i’m probably not ever going to finish it. i guess if a bunch of people want me to, i might revisit and patch it up somewhat, but that seems pretty unlikely at this juncture. all my love to anyone choosing to read it anyway!

Jaime remembered the days of anticipation leading up to Tyrion’s birth. 

It had been spring then at Casterly Rock, the time when newborn flowers budded through the grass in the yards that Jaime played and dug up worms in. Every day after his brief studies-- which went poorly even then, when he couldn’t have been any older than four and a half-- he recalled going with Cersei to their mother’s bedchamber to ask if the baby was ready to come out yet. He remembered her always smiling, maybe shaking her head or saying their little sibling needed to rest longer. She would take their tiny hands in hers and hold them to her belly, and if they were lucky, the baby would kick once or shift around within her. He remembered Cersei laying out a few old, soft toys of hers that she wanted to give the baby when it came. He remembered she had chosen one of her favorites-- a fabric bird of muted blue with dark beads for eyes, and a beak made from polished wood.

Everything changed the day their mother went into labor. Jaime remembered that well, too.

It was the first birth he had ever seen, and he didn’t see all of it. Along with his sister, he was ushered out of the room by a septa when the midwives realized that something was wrong. It wasn’t of much use, though. Jaime could hear the wails of his dying mother from his and Cersei’s bedchamber, and besides that, they had both seen it when their mother began to bleed. 

Jaime was snapped out of his thoughts when Cersei gripped his hand tightly. She was breathing heavier now, inhaling through her nose in time with the septa’s instructions from the other side of the bed. 

“Not much longer now,” another woman said from where she stood at the end of the bed. Jaime didn’t know who she was-- she wasn’t dressed like a septa, so he supposed she might just be a midwife. He silently hoped that she knew what she was doing.

Jaime had been out of the city when Joffrey was born. Of course, King Robert hadn’t been there either, but he still felt bad to have missed it. Cersei hadn’t even let him hold the boy until days after his birth. When Cersei had found out she was with child again, Jaime had timed the days as best he could to make sure he would be there for the birth this time. 

Cersei groaned, and Jaime felt panic flare up in his chest. The memory of Tyrion’s birth would not leave his mind; it troubled him to know how easily something like that could happen. After all, they had all thought Joanna Lannister’s second pregnancy was as healthy as could be. 

“That squire boy--” Jaime started, feeling like his skin was crawling with ants, “he was sent to bring the king long ago. Why haven’t they come up yet?”

“Many fathers don’t come to see the birth, ser,” a septa responded calmly. Cersei let out a roar, lioness that she was, and her hold tightened painfully on Jaime’s hand. Jaime remembered how his own father was away on the day of Tyrion’s birth.

“He should be here,” he repeated. It wasn’t like he wanted Robert there, but it was the principle of the thing that irritated him.

“Shut up,” Cersei said through gritted teeth. Jaime watched as her face contorted with concentration. 

“That’s it, dear. Nearly there,” the woman that Jaime had decided was a midwife said, voice encouraging. She was crouched down by Cersei’s feet now, stock-still as she waited for the child’s arrival. 

Jaime thought of the blood on his mother’s bed sheets again. 

Cersei screamed, and the gaggle of women rushed over to the foot of the bed. Jaime couldn’t tell what they were doing, but after only a few moments, the midwife pulled a delicate, pink infant into her arms, wrapping the tiny thing in some blankets that the septas had readied. Jaime felt his breath catch in his throat, and he looked back to Cersei. She was gazing triumphantly at the swaddled bundle. She let his hand go as the midwife came around the bed and handed her the baby, carefully placing it in her arms, like a valuable trinket or a very old book. 

“She’s in perfect health, my queen,” the midwife said warmly. Jaime felt stunned. It wasn’t unlike the feeling he’d gotten at a tourney some years before, when his opponent had unhorsed him. He had fallen hard onto his back and, while unharmed, was unable to breathe for what felt like an eternity-- his lungs were working now, but it hardly mattered. The little girl in Cersei’s arms was so tiny, so precious, he couldn’t imagine her surviving for longer than a day. But he knew she would. 

“Myrcella,” Cersei said, dignified, queenly, as if she hadn’t just given birth. She looked to Jaime for the first time since going into labor. “Take her.”

Obliging, Jaime eased the child into his arms. She was still crying. He shifted his hold on her, not looking away from her round little face, and tucked her blanket around her more snugly. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Princess Myrcella,” he whispered. He reached out with his right hand to gently touch her cheek---

Jaime awoke with a start. He was laying on the rough forest floor, still shrouded in darkness. The dawn hadn’t yet broken. 

After a moment he sat up and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. It hadn’t been a nightmare, and yet he was in a cold sweat, with a heartbeat like a galloping steed. Why he had dreamed about the birth of his daughter so many years after it happened, he wasn’t sure-- and in such vivid detail. But the dream had been nice. He realized with a dull pang how long it had been since he’d seen her. Since he’d seen his sons. How long had he been traipsing through woods and across streams, he wondered? He had lost track of the days somewhere along the way.

Suddenly, his body gave a lurch. He caught himself with his left elbow and immediately retched into the grass. A sourness had entered his throat some three months after Robb Stark had first taken him prisoner, and hadn’t left in all the many hours between then and now, but Gods be good...Jaime was just grateful that he could still tell when he was going to be sick. 

His stomach forced up another round of bile, and he coughed. Though he’d started eating again, there was just no keeping it down; he’d lost his dinner in a similar manner earlier that evening. But that seemed to be the end of it for now. He wearily pushed himself back up into a sitting position and wiped his mouth.

As the thoughts of his dream slowly faded into the night, Jaime glanced around the small clearing. The constant ache in his wrist (which he could finally bring himself to look at) was becoming easier to ignore now that it was actually being treated and wrapped properly. At least, it didn’t keep him from sleeping anymore. 

His eyes found, among the vaguely person-shaped lumps, the one with bright yellow hair. He could not make out the intricacies of her shape in the darkness, but she still stood out from the other men in their party, laying a cart’s length away from him. 

Distractedly, he realized that she must have stopped watching him sleep at some point. He had pointed out to her on numerous occasions that he hadn’t actually ever tried to escape in the night, but she was always smart enough to ignore him then. Things were different now, Jaime thought bitterly. A one-handed man doesn’t have much to run for.

He felt guilty almost immediately after he thought it. It was his own damn fault for losing the hand, and besides, he wasn’t giving Brienne enough credit. She knew he couldn’t win in a fight against her now, but she also knew that he wasn’t going to start one. She trusted him after Harrenhal. 

A strange feeling entered Jaime’s gut, but it wasn’t nausea. She would have liked to kill him once if she hadn’t been honor-bound not to. And now, they were… what were they? Friends?

Jaime decided that he didn’t want to think about it anymore. Before long, they would be in King’s Landing, and his life could go back to normal. Before long, such things wouldn’t matter. Being considered a friend by Brienne of Tarth wouldn’t matter.

He laid down again, tucking his wrapped stump securely under his other arm. In truth, she was one of the noblest people he had ever met. Nobler than he was by an ocean’s worth. Nobler than Prince Rhaegar, who Jaime had been fond of once. Perhaps she was as noble as Ser Arthur Dayne.

_It doesn’t matter,_ Jaime reminded himself pointedly. Even so, there was a whisper within him that disagreed. There was a time when he had been obsessed with honor. Having been donned in the white-and-gold Kingsguard robes when he was hardly past boyhood, he hadn’t much of a choice but to care then. Ser Arthur Dayne, Ser Barristan Selmy, stories of Ser Duncan-- they all inspired him once. Now they just felt like a mockery.

Still, he thought again of the maid from Tarth. Her moral backbone was of Valyrian steel. It wasn’t about houses or riches for her. It wasn’t even about love. She did what was right, what seemed honorable and just, no matter the circumstance. Even in the bear pit she had not intended on being rescued. 

Jaime’s thoughts wandered on aimlessly, lingering on heroes and knights and those that were neither, until he fell back into a fitful sleep. 

+++

“Let’s stop here.”

Jaime pulled his horse to a halt at Steelshanks’ words, silently thankful. He had been riding horses all his life, but this one was rather finicky, and only having one hand to steer didn’t help the matter. After that trek, he was nearly certain that there was no saving his poor tailbone. He eased himself off his horse and onto the ground below.

It was a good place to stop. The grass was thick and bright here, and along the journey the dark, northern trees from around Harrenhal had transitioned into the soft pines more commonly found in the south. Jaime noticed a gentle noise coming from further within the wood, and promptly took off towards it. Steelshanks only gave him a brief customary glance as he went-- it had turned out that he was smarter than he looked, and as such, he presumably knew Jaime had no intent to flee. 

Jaime reached the brook he’d heard quickly. It was barely past a few trees, and he could easily see the men (plus Brienne) milling about, but it still felt somewhat isolated. Even with the brief respite at Harrenhal, Jaime felt like he hadn’t been alone in a long time.

He sat down on the bank. The itch of his empty wrist had been bugging him for hours now, so he clumsily yanked off the bandages and dunked it into the water. The cold was immediately soothing. He didn’t know what exactly Qyburn had done to him, but the pain no longer traveled up the length of his bicep as it had before; it now petered out along his forearm, not even reaching his elbow. Whatever it was, he was thankful for it. Of course, a part of him also wondered if the lessened ache was only because time had passed, but another part of him yet felt like the ex maester had something to do with it. No matter the reason, he was feeling a lot better. There had been a fog that seemed to cling to his mind ever since he lost his hand, but even that had cleared up considerably, and he found himself able to steadily focus for the first time in a while. 

He pulled his wrist out from the stream, shaking off droplets of water. He regarded the wound with mild interest and realized that it really didn’t look so bad anymore. The first time he’d actually looked at it-- other than, of course, when Locke first took the blade to it-- was when Qyburn had cut the spoiled flesh away, and it had been a horrible sight then. In his head, it had been more gruesome than when he’d first killed by cutting a man’s head from his body, but Jaime knew that was only a trick of his memory. It was sewn up well now, though. It almost made him a little hopeful. For what, he wasn’t sure-- after all, even the finest dressings could not bring his sword hand back.

He finished drying his skin off with the fabric from his tunic, and then pulled the length of bandage from his lap. Dumbly, he realized that he hadn’t exactly planned this well, or really at all. How had Qyburn wrapped it? He tried to dredge up the memory, but it wouldn’t come.

After staring blankly at his stump for surely far too long, he decided to just wind the bandage around as best he could. He started by holding one end of it to the mouth of the wound, but it kept slipping when he tried to pull the rest of it loose with his index finger, and holding the free edge with his teeth didn’t seem to help--

“What are you doing?”

The words startled Jaime. He spat the bandage out and looked over his shoulder to see Brienne standing a meter or so away, looking at him with a puzzled expression. He smiled thinly.

“Eating my bandages,” he said, chest feeling mysteriously tight all of a sudden. “Or so it appears.”

The look in Brienne’s eyes changed, but the difference was so slight than Jaime could not identify its meaning. Her gaze dropped to his bare wrist.

Her voice almost sounded awkward. “I can go get Qyburn.”

“I don’t need his help,” Jaime said, quicker than he meant to. He held back a cringe. He knew it was plain to see that he was in well over his head, and Brienne was no fool anyway.

Brienne let out a huff of a sigh and, surprisingly, came to kneel next to him. Mud along the stream bank squelched under her boot as she leaned over to take the bandage from him. His brain processed what was happening too slowly to stop her, so she started wrapping the cloth securely around his wrist. The touch of her fingers sent him back to when she’d caught him in the baths at Harrenhal, and he looked down, trying to push the unease out from his mind. 

He hadn’t meant to tell her about King Aerys. He hadn’t _wanted_ to. Twenty years, and he’d never told anyone what happened that day, not even Cersei. He couldn’t decide if he regretted telling Brienne. On one hand, it felt wrong to after all this time, but on the other… he felt like its hold on him had lessened now that someone else knew. Someone living. Lost in thought, he found himself glancing back over to Brienne’s face as she worked, and--

“You’re not ugly,” he blurted out. Her hands stopped moving and she looked at him, squinting. He thanked the Gods for all the practice he’d had controlling his facial expressions, because now he felt more embarrassed than ever. “I said you were before. When we first met. But you’re not-- bad to look at.”

A look of understanding seemed to cross Brienne’s face, and she gave a short, dismissive laugh. Starting to work on his bandages again, she said, “No need to thank me. You never could have wrapped this back up on your own.”

The embarrassment slowly left Jaime’s stomach, and another unidentifiable feeling settled in its place. Whatever it was compelled him to speak again.

“I wasn't trying to thank you,” he said quietly. 

Brienne’s hands slowed to a stop once again, but this time she didn’t make eye contact. Her face betrayed no emotions. They simply sat there for a moment, Jaime’s wrist in her hand, and it was strange, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. It was as though a forceful calmness had taken hold of Jaime’s body. Finally, the long moment passed, and Brienne secured the bandages with a twist and a small knot. Then she rose and walked back towards the others.

Feeling possessed by something he did not understand, Jaime looked back at his wrist, if only to have something to focus on. He couldn’t even begin to parse Brienne’s reaction, so he didn’t try. It likely wasn’t his business anyway. But he wondered about himself-- about why he had spoken so readily, without even realizing what was coming out of his mouth. It was true, he supposed. She hadn’t seemed ugly to him in a long time. Beastly, yes, but most knights were beastly. She did fight like a brute. His mind called forward the memory of the baths again, the memory of her face that night, lit by candles, hauntingly different than he’d ever seen a face look before-- and then he shook his head, as if to banish the image from his mind’s eye. 

He needed to get back to King’s Landing.


	2. Chapter 2

When Jaime first told the handmaidens to cut it all off, they hadn’t wanted to do it. Whether it was because his long hair was a staple to his appearance or because they were loyal to Cersei before anyone else, he couldn’t tell, but they’d tried to convince him that they could detangle it, work fine oil into it, just snip off the really awful ends, whatever. But he told them again to cut it off, and they did. All of it. Really, it wasn’t worth saving. His hair was beginning to darken past its signature Lannister gold, and besides, he was getting older. Most of the noblest men he could think of had short hair. Ser Arthur Dayne came to mind, as always. Of course, Ned Stark had long hair past six children and right to his death, and that had to be considered-- but it was a silly thing to keep worrying about anyway. Jaime wanted to cut his hair, and so he did.

When he saw how he looked-- cleanshaven for the first time in two years and short-haired for the first time in more than twenty-- he knew Cersei wouldn’t like it. He didn’t look like himself, and it wasn’t just because of the deep purple marks under his eyes and the cuts flecked about his face. He looked like a different person. He didn’t look so much like her anymore.

When he realized it, he set the mirror face-down and made an excuse to leave the handmaidens as quickly as possible.

Of course, he was right. Cersei hadn’t liked it. Though, she hadn’t much liked his precipitous one-handedness either. Jaime reasoned with himself that she would simply have to deal with the changes. 

The return to King’s Landing was almost seeming to be more difficult and grueling than the journey itself had been. Jaime might have even thought so directly, had he not lost a hand somewhere north of Harrenhal. Regardless, there was no denying it: he had changed, and Cersei, miserably, had not.

This was not something he believed he could ever speak to her about. He couldn’t understand himself, his own feelings-- truly, it was unfair for him to expect that Cersei be any different now than she was when he had been taken from her. And after all, wouldn’t he feel just as wronged if she _had_ been different? Wouldn’t he think that unfair too? There was no winning, but there was also no way of reckoning with it, no one he could talk to who would understand what this big gaping wreck meant to him.

He was being dramatic, he knew that. But he couldn’t help feeling it. Cersei still let him in her bed, just as she had before. They spent nearly as much time together. And yet, something still was wrong with their interactions… not quite something missing, but something that had never been there to begin with. A chasm that had only recently made itself known. Jaime could not name it, nor could he decipher why he’d noticed the gap at all. Foolishly, he wished he could talk to Tyrion about it, some part of him all the while knowing that the only thing keeping him from doing so was himself. He felt dreadful and guilty all in one.

It was not unlike the stretch of time after he’d killed King Aerys. He’d been young then, even more inclined to appear willful and self controlled. He remembered walking the castle listlessly in the hours he wasn’t needed, jaw clenching and unclenching with the emotional wild abandon that he could not express. How long had that been? Two weeks? A month? He couldn’t say for sure, as the time seemed to blend together in his memory. That had been the year he realized that a man could dream while he was awake. They were always horrible, the dreams you dreamed with your eyes open. They were always the things you wanted most to forget.

And so it went: Jaime felt alone, Jaime felt uncomfortable, Jaime went to Cersei, Cersei didn’t understand. She wouldn’t understand even if he told her, and he couldn't tell her anyway. What was more, his stump disgusted her. She didn’t have to say it for him to know. He wondered some nights if she thought he was too dull to realize, or if she just didn’t care that he knew. He didn’t want to think about which was more likely. 

Rueful limbo. He hoped it was temporary. 

+++

Cersei began pulling a brush through her long hair. Jaime could see the reflection of her face in the mirror she sat in front of-- her expression was thoughtful, and guarded, like it always was. He watched her for a moment before looking down to tighten the straps of his golden hand. Its weight was almost starting to feel normal, he had noticed. Even the glint of it had stopped catching his eye so much. It was a bit garish, but truthfully, he was just relieved that his wrist hadn’t caught more infection on the way back to King’s Landing. He swiveled his golden hand around, trying to catch the light with it. 

“That woman from Tarth…” Cersei began from across the room, tone carefully conversational, “what was her name?”

Jaime’s eyes flitted back up to where she sat at the mirror. Despite himself, he felt his cheeks warm slightly. “Brienne.”

Cersei’s eyes were still focused on her own reflection, icy calm. “She doesn’t seem to like it much in the city.”

“Have you spoken with her?” Jaime asked.

“I didn’t have to,” Cersei replied evenly, gaze shifting now to Jaime through the mirror’s reflection. He suddenly felt uncomfortable in a way he could not decipher. Numbly, he wondered if the differences in their relationship since he returned to King’s Landing were as apparent to Cersei as they were to him. 

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked, trying to sound as calm and careless as she did. He realized a moment too late that she was too clever not to notice he was dodging the question. 

She slowly set her brush down on the mirror table in front of her. She didn’t turn to face him, but all the same, he knew what was coming next.

“Maybe I should speak with her after all. I’ve never met such a strange brute of a woman.”

Jaime knew it was bait, but he couldn’t help himself. “She’s a highborn lady.”

“Yes,” Cersei said, sounding disinterested, as if she hadn’t brought the topic up herself. “Maybe someone ought to tell her.”

Strangely, Jaime felt himself growing angry. He didn’t know how to wade these waters. He wasn’t used to the feeling, to being on the other side. Finally, he heard himself speak, fortunately sounding more composed than he felt. “Don’t act like that, Cersei. You don’t know her. She helped me when I lost my hand.”

At last, Cersei turned in her seat to look at him quizzically. “By the way, how _did_ you lose your hand? You’ve yet to tell me the story.”

“It’s not a very good one,” Jaime said quietly, feeling the discomfort rise within him even further. Missing Cersei for so long on the road to King’s Landing, he had forgotten how stubborn she could be. How she could sometimes make him feel like a young squire being interrogated by his master for stealing. 

“I think I deserve to know why the man I love did not come home to me fully intact,” Cersei said curtly, her voice breaking through his thoughts. A light sigh escaped his lips.

“...We were captured by Northern men along the way,” he said reluctantly. His eyes found a spot on the floor to stare at. “I tried to bargain with them. Their leader didn’t like that, so he cut off my sword hand to prove a point.” When he looked back up, Cersei was regarding him carefully. He was relieved, however, to see that there were no accusations within her eyes-- she didn’t realize just how much of the story he’d neutered. He supposed it seemed a likely enough tale without all the details. After all, he had never liked telling her much of his battle stories before, so maybe she wouldn’t see his brevity as out of character.

Cersei was quiet for a long moment. Then, her eyes darkened, and she looked back to her mirror. “You shouldn’t have let him take it from you.”

Jaime’s brow furrowed. “You can’t seriously expect--”

“You’re supposed to be a knight,” she said, knowing just what to say and how to say it to cut him sharply. There was some kind of precise bitterness in her tone. “Not only a knight, a member of the king’s guard. You shouldn’t have even been caught.”

Jaime’s head swam with a mixture of outrage and confusion. Cersei never used to treat him like this. They had always been on the same side before; they could always rely on each other to be the one person who understood. Jaime sat there on the edge of Cersei’s bed, at a loss for words, for what felt like forever. She didn’t move a muscle. 

Finally, Jaime listened to the skin prickling on the back of his neck and stood. He went for the door, throwing one last errant thought over his shoulder as he went-- “Maybe I shouldn’t have come back to King’s Landing either.”

He could practically feel Cersei stiffen behind him, and as his hand touched the dark wooden door, he hesitated. Tried to slow his thinking, tried to rationalize. The straps of his prosthetic hand twisted uncomfortably on his wrist.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said, pathetically. 

Cersei’s words were cool and unforgiving. “That’s quite alright. You seem to be in a hurry, anyway.”

Jaime felt sick. He pushed her bedchamber door open and stormed out, letting it slam behind him with a pointed _wham_. Bile was quickly collecting in the bottom of his throat, threatening to come up and make a nervous appearance. Stupidly, and too late to count, as usual, he realized that he’d left his jerkin in her bedchamber. He certainly couldn’t go back for it now. Cersei would bite his other hand off and devour it whole. Instead, he swallowed the bile, sighed irritably, and marched down the hall towards his own bedchamber. 

It wasn’t the end of the world. Couples fought, of course he knew that. But still, something had felt so wrong about the way they had spoken to each other. Like they were trying to prove something. He could barely stomach it. His golden hand pulled again at his wrist as he stalked down the hall, and he hated the thought, he did, but he was starting to feel worse here in King’s Landing than he had when he’d been throwing up from pain every night out in the forest. At least then, there was a sort of certainty to his troubles. He knew his wounds would heal. Here, he realized with a dreadful feeling, the city could tear them apart, and there might very well be nothing he could do to stop it. 

Suddenly, a tall figure rounded the corner he was coming up on, and he almost barreled right into it in his haste. He stopped himself just short of running the poor bastard over and shook his head, as if to clear his mind. 

“Brienne,” he said, his voice almost turning the name into a question. 

“Gods, going at that rate, you’re going to run into a wall,” she remarked, sounding a little surprised. She was dressed in a simple blue tunic with expensive buttons. It had no doubt been given to her upon their arrival at King’s Landing. The ever-distracted part of Jaime’s mind wondered idly who gave it to her, and all at once he felt more stupid than sick.

“I’m sorry,” he said, catching his breath. He hadn’t noticed how fast he’d been going. He shook his head again, feeling silly for acting so frazzled in front of her. “I’ve just been-- I was going to my bedchamber.”

“With great purpose, it seems.” One corner of Brienne’s mouth turned up in amusement, but Jaime didn’t feel like he was being laughed at. If he were in a better state, he might have smiled back.

“Can’t face any wild courtiers in just my shirt. But-- where are you headed? I’ll walk you there first,” he offered, starting to calm down somewhat from his spat with Cersei. 

Brienne almost looked sheepish. “I was coming to find you, actually. I wanted to speak with you about something.”

“Oh.” Jaime walked around her, turning as he did to motion with his hand. “Come on, then. We can talk in my chamber.”

Brienne followed him without another word, and before long, they had arrived at the end of a side hall. Jaime pushed open the heavy door to his chamber. He went straight to his chest of drawers, but he saw out of the corner of his eye as Brienne took a long look about his bedchamber. As he pulled out a few drawers to search for another jerkin, she spoke.

“I guess I expected a knight of the king’s guard to have a bigger room,” she mused. Jaime gave a short laugh.

“Knights don’t spend much time in their rooms,” he said plainly. “Tourneys to fight, kings to… well, guard. Not unless they have a reason to.”

Brienne made no comment, but she sat when Jaime gestured to a bench near the dresser. He was wondering where in the seven kingdoms all his jerkins had gone when she spoke again. 

“I suppose I just never really thought about it before.”

Oh, well. He would just have to put on a tunic. He’d have preferred not to, with the weather as warm as it was, but a tunic would likely fit him better anyway. He’d lost some noticeable weight since he’d been away from the city. He pulled his shirt off and discarded it on top of the dresser. It was only when he turned to the closet that he noticed Brienne staring hard at the ground.

He stopped for a moment, remembering that she had come looking for him for a reason. Although Cersei’s comments had irked him, she was right; Brienne hadn’t exactly melded well with life in King’s Landing. Maybe something had upset her. 

“...What’s wrong?” he asked, feeling a bit foolish. 

“Nothing,” Brienne said quickly. “I just-- thought it would be rude to watch you change.”

Amused now, as well as a little relieved, Jaime let out a small huff of air as he opened the closet door. “I didn’t really think it mattered, since we’ve already seen each other--”

Jaime cut himself off, at once very embarrassed. He felt like an idiot. Really, what had he planned on saying? _That’s alright, Brienne. I’m only taking my shirt off, and you’ve already seen me naked. Not to mention, I’ve seen you naked, too. When we were in that northern lord’s bath and I wept like a babe. Don’t you remember?_

He cleared his throat a little too loudly, and chose a tunic from the closet without another word. When he had finished tugging it on and fastening it, Brienne was looking up again, graciously pretending she didn’t know how he had been intending to finish that sentence. 

“You said you wanted to talk to me about something?” he asked, leaning an elbow on the dresser next to him. 

Evidently recovered from the embarrassing moment far quicker than he was, she said, “I suppose I wanted to speak to you out of courtesy.”

“Courtesy?” Jaime echoed, remembering that she was highborn. As such, ‘courtesy’ could mean quite possibly anything. But Brienne just looked thoughtful, gaze somewhere far off past his elbow. She appeared to be choosing her words very particularly.

“I think,” she said carefully, “I should leave King’s Landing.”

Jaime’s breath escaped him, but fortunately it just ended up sounding like a tired sigh. First the fight with Cersei, and now-- he realized it was disappointment he was feeling. A very peculiar kind of disappointment. She was making eye contact with him now, ever so patiently, and for a moment it was all he could do to flit his gaze from one deep blue eye to the other. A memory eased into his mind-- meaningless, their sword fight on the bridge, back when they had honest to the gods wanted to kill each other-- and something quickened within his chest. 

“I won’t stop you,” he said decidedly, trying to make his voice sound diplomatic. “But would you wait until after Joffrey’s wedding? The roads will be clearer then anyway. You could leave before the week’s festivities end.”

She watched him for a moment more. Brienne of Tarth never hid her expressions like Cersei (or Jaime himself) did, but he still couldn’t quite read the look on her face now. It was somewhere between exasperation and deep thought, but even that wasn’t right. As Jaime contemplated this, she stood once more, giving him a curt nod.

“Alright,” she agreed. “After the wedding.”

“Good,” Jaime said, perhaps too quickly. She looked, for a moment, like she wanted to say something else, but instead she gave a brief bow and turned to the door. Determined in some strange way to keep the interaction friendly, Jaime took a few quick paces ahead of her to open the door. She gave him an odd look as he did.

“We can talk more about your preparations to travel later,” he said, almost as an afterthought. He felt funny again, embarrassed. But Brienne just uttered a few words of agreement and went through the open door. He followed her through, promptly pulling it closed behind him, and she turned to him one last time. 

“I won’t be staying for very long after the wedding,” she said, quietly, like it was some kind of confession. Jaime blinked. He felt like there was something he was missing.

“Alright,” was all he said. Before he could think of anything else to add, the sound of light footsteps drew his attention down the hall. Brienne turned her head to look at nearly the same moment Jaime did.

Cersei walked evenly toward them, ever regal and calm, long skirts trailing behind her like the lowered tail of a waiting lion. Draped across her arm was Jaime’s discarded jerkin, neatly folded. Jaime’s face blanched. 

“Your grace,” Brienne said immediately, lowering her head momentarily. Cersei came to a stop in front of them and looked to Brienne, mouth in a pleasant upward tilt.

“My lady,” she replied. Her face turned to Jaime, unreadable as ever. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”

Jaime glanced at Brienne before speaking. His voice came out stiffer than he meant it to. “Lady Brienne and I were just discussing King Joffrey’s wedding.”

One of Cersei’s eyebrows barely raised. 

“I’m planning to leave the city after the royal wedding, your grace. Ser Jaime suggested I leave while the roads are empty,” Brienne elaborated. Jaime glanced once more at her; she looked uncomfortable, but she spoke well. It wasn’t as though they had anything to lie about, but still, Brienne was smarter than he, and her words ensured that Cersei could not implicate them of anything.

“It’s a shame you have to leave so soon,” Cersei hummed, giving Brienne a smile. The gesture made Jaime’s insides twist up, and he realized that he would quite like to be literally anywhere else. Cersei looked at him again and extended an arm. “I think this is yours, brother.”

Self-consciously, Jaime took the folded jerkin from her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brienne eye the bundle, and a thin wash of shame overtook him. 

“I should be leaving,” she said politely. “Your grace, Ser Jaime.”

“There’s a mare I think would suit your journey, Lady Brienne,” Jaime blurted out, if only to end the conversation with words that held actual meaning. He ignored the veiled look that Cersei shot him. “Remind me to take you to the stables soon.”

Cersei smiled one last fabricated smile, Brienne gave a nod of acknowledgement towards them both, and after a moment of footsteps steadily fading to silence, Jaime was alone with his sister again. They remained silent for a moment longer still.

“You told her to leave?” Cersei asked, finally. Jaime did not answer. He felt some kind of small defeat. No matter what he said, it wouldn’t feel right: he hadn’t asked Brienne to leave, but Cersei gathered that he had, which made him feel rotten enough that he might as well have ordered her out before nightfall. He could feel a headache coming on. 

Cersei didn’t seem to mind that he hadn’t responded. She clasped her hands together and, before walking off, said swiftly: “Try not to leave your clothing in my chamber again. We’re getting careless.”

Watching her figure grow smaller as she marched farther and farther away, Jaime tucked the folded jerkin under his right arm and reached up to rub his forehead.


	3. Chapter 3

Jaime blinked hard, and then blinked again. At first he had thought that an especially bright shaft of sunlight had blinded him, but now his eyes had adjusted well enough for him to see that he was in a large, shadowed cavern. He could not know if it was somewhere he’d been before, as the darkness was too steep; regardless, as soon as he’d realized the nature of his surroundings, he could hear the occasional dripping of distant water on rock. The smell, too: a damp, earthy quality to the still air, and perhaps even traces of a salt breeze. 

He thought, in an instant, of Casterly Rock. He had plenty of fond memories of playing or training out in the yards, where the sea breeze always wafted. But this was different. It was not the Sunset Sea he smelled. 

Turning first by the shoulders, and then his whole body, Jaime began to walk in an arbitrary direction. His vision only extended to the rocky floor and, every so often, the oddly sloped ceiling, and he got the impression that the cavern was unfathomably large. 

Jaime’s confidence grew as he walked, and soon he was certain that he would not-- almost surely could not-- hit a wall at any point. Perhaps he could walk in any direction for days and still encounter no obstacles. Normally, the unnatural thought would likely frighten him, but here his mind was calm. 

After some fifteen minutes of travel, he came upon a figure in the darkness, barely illuminated enough to stand out. Jaime stopped three meters or so before it, at once feeling beholden to its peculiar form. There was a curiosity in him at the sight of it. There was also something in him that wanted to reach out and touch it, to help it in some way.

Suddenly, and before his thoughts could go any further, Jaime recognized the figure by the mere slope of its shoulders-- he had memorized the way those lines curved years ago. It was Prince Rhaegar. 

Stunned, Jaime’s feet failed him, and before he knew it he was on his knees, feeling terribly small. 

The prince turned ever so slightly with the telltale elegance that Jaime had never seen another man possess. The shift revealed something in his hands: an odd sword. The glint of it seemed to pierce Jaime’s eyes directly, and his hands instinctively flew up to block the light.

Then, a monstrous crack echoed all around the cavern, and the dream revealed its true nature. Jaime regained control over himself just in time to leap to his feet, avoiding the sudden flames below. They licked at his legs wretchedly, flooding forward as though controlled by some unseen force, scorching his skin with white-hot tendrils. He desperately scrambled away. Back, further back, until his spine impossibly made contact with the stony walls, which quickly began constricting around him, scraping at his skin and squeezing his weary shoulders--

A voice called out, but it was not Rhaegar’s. 

Jaime shot up like a bolt. He was out of the damned cavern and back into his darkened bedchamber, practically knotted into his bedsheets; he must have been tossing and turning for hours. Searching for any scrap of comfort, he tucked his arms around his torso. He was no stranger to bad dreams, even strange dreams, but this one-- it seemed different somehow. Like his subconscious was trying to tell him something, something dire, something he knew but couldn’t fathom. And that voice…

Jaime let out a deep sigh. His memory of the dream was fleeting, and already mostly gone. He had known the voice; that much he was sure of. He thought he might have even known what it was saying. But he couldn’t tell now, couldn’t remember or decipher it, and if he wasn’t so frazzled he would be frustrated enough to go all the way down to the stables and unhitch his horse for a night ride. 

Instead, he got up and went to open a window. 

The cool air was a relief. It flowed comfortably into his bedchamber, calming his nerves as it pushed at his hair and the collar of his shirt. The moon was low, he noticed-- at least he’d slept well for most of the night. 

He turned his back to the window and sat at the bench beneath it. It was not often, anymore, that he dreamed of Rhaegar. He always dreamed of fire; that was mostly unavoidable. But the rest of his dreams more often centered round battles he’d been in, losing his family in a great raging sea, groping handless in a thick black fog until he woke up tasting blood from how hard he’d been biting the insides of his cheeks. Sometimes he dreamed of the Starks, tying him up and taunting him with voices that bit like their direwolves’ jaws. He usually paid those dreams no mind. 

But he did not often dream of Rhaegar. He preferred this-- whenever he woke up from one of those, there was a heavy, sodden guilt weighing in his chest for the remainder of the day. Rhaegar had been his _friend._ He almost hadn’t believed it when they told him the prince was killed-- he was still more boy than man at the time, and his mind had constructed alternatives to the recounts he was given, painting Rhaegar as the valiant dragon who escaped into the night on impressive, ideological wings. 

Reality, he had since learned, was always more disappointing than fiction. 

Two of his children were dead.

Joffrey’s death had been a spectacle. The scene replayed in Jaime’s mind some nights, as it surely did in Cersei’s. It had been a gruesome way to go. But that had been a while ago now, long enough that Jaime was beginning to find his peace with the event. Of course, he would never be glad that his son was murdered, but he could at least accept its circumstances. 

Myrcella, though, had been killed only recently, and as such her memory weighed on Jaime almost constantly. However, something had happened after she died-- while he had still been in shock and could not yet allow his body to weep for her-- he had thought about his return to King’s Landing, and realized that Cersei would surely blame him for their daughter’s death. The fact itself didn’t surprise him; the real surprise had been that he’d almost immediately accepted it. In fact, he’d almost immediately believed it, too-- almost. 

Bronn, of course, helped identify the poison, as it had been used on him not long before. It was only then Jaime realized that he was so used to Cersei’s constant manipulation that he had begun manipulating his own thoughts in her favor, without so much as even seeing her face. 

He didn’t know what to do with that knowledge, so he tried to forget it as best he could. But it still nagged at him.

And now Tommen was king. Their baby boy, their youngest, the kindest of their children. The one who had always cried the most, even well into childhood. Jaime feared for him. Jaime had fears he could not even put a name to, these days… and far too many of them had to do with his sister. 

For the slightest moment, thoughts of a noblewoman crept into his mind, clad in fine armor and wielding a sword with a lion-headed pommel-- but he banished the thoughts as quickly as he could. It did him no good to think of her. Not now, and not ever. He had said goodbye to her; called her by her name one last time and sent her off into the sunset with a dead woman’s orders. He would never see her again, and he had to make his peace with that. 

Still, he watched the sun rise outside of his window, and when the sky went from inky black to a soft, light blue, he thought of Tarth.

+++

At midday Tommen came to him. He had been in the war room then, mostly doing nothing-- he had never been much of a socialite, but in his adulthood he had found himself wishing to recede even further into privacy, and patrolling the war room was a good way to stay away from people. It was also not a place Cersei frequented.

He hadn’t been expecting Tommen. Truly, he was surprised the boy even knew where he was. But Tommen had come alone, which gave Jaime a certain feeling of relief, and he hadn’t wanted much. All he had done was ask about Robert’s actions during the rebellion. It seemed strange at the time, considering how many people had known that young version of Robert better than Jaime had, but hours later in the courtyards he had nearly wanted to kick himself when he realized that perhaps the boy had just wanted to spend time with him. The thought filled him with a deep shame-- not just for distancing himself from his son, but for distancing himself for so bloody long. He had always been known as the doting uncle, but still, there was a certain closeness that he had never allowed himself to achieve. His stomach turned as he thought again of Myrcella.

He almost had to remind himself that Joffrey had been killed, too. Of course, he had loved their firstborn, but it had always seemed like he was more _Cersei’s_ child than _Cersei and Jaime’s,_ or even _Cersei and Robert’s._ Cersei had claimed him for her own as soon as he’d come into the world, and no father or wife could ever have bested that, not even if he had lived a full life. 

Sometimes Jaime did not feel like a father. 

He knew that was because of the role he had to play, and the great secret he had been keeping his whole life, but sometimes a deep, hidden part of him blamed Cersei for it. Blamed her for claiming the children as her own, blamed her for the distance that had grown between them since their youth, blamed her for blaming him. 

He had been born holding tightly to his twin sister’s foot, a servant once told him in his boyhood. He looked down at his golden hand. It almost seemed to mock him now, glinting triumphantly in the afternoon sun which bathed the courtyard. In his mind, he conjured up an image of a tiny foot in his own newborn palm, and wondered dumbly which hand he had grasped her with.

+++

And so he fought Cersei’s wars for two more years. The seed, however, had been planted, and a sapling of doubt grew stronger and taller each time he came back to her. She was still far smarter than he, but that had nothing to do with it; it didn’t matter anymore what she was hoping to gain by twisting his thoughts, just that she was twisting his thoughts at all. There were times, of course, that the sapling’s leaves were snipped. Times when his emotions ruled over the rest of him, times when she seemed truly sincere, times when he felt it didn’t matter anyway. But the sapling remained. And when he had returned home to see her crowning herself victor over the ruins of a sept, over the ruins of their last son, the doubt had matured into much more than a sapling. He hadn’t known what to do then with the glaring truth of his emotions. Regardless, it was such that when he did leave, at the end of it all, when the Targaryen girl and Ned Stark’s bastard came to their doorstep with proof of something worse than death, it was not difficult. Not nearly as difficult as he had thought it would be. There had been a time when he would have crippled himself to stay with Cersei, but that time had passed. Roose Bolton’s man had crippled him before he’d ever had the chance to do it for love. A love which, he had realized, had never really been his in the first place. 

So he started north.


	4. Chapter 4

When he was little more than a child, Jaime had learned very well that there would always be somebody who wanted him dead. By the time he was a man, he had learned that, more often than not, it would be more than one somebody. It had gotten to the point where he was used to the fact that most of the somebodies in Westeros (and most of the nobodies, too) would jump at the chance to put his head on a pike. He had left King’s Landing fully aware of that.

So he would die on the way to Winterfell. Or if that didn’t happen, he would die fighting against the creatures that even the lawless Wildlings had nightmares about. And if by some miracle he survived those frozen beasts, then Cersei would have him murdered in time for the next solstice.

He didn’t have to worry about surviving Cersei.

Regardless of his fate, he knew he would be dead before his forty-fourth name day. That was fine. Most of the people he loved were dead now themselves. Those that remained could easily live without him. His thoughts went quickly to his brother-- ever-enduring Tyrion, who had always been so clever. With all his cleverness, Jaime supposed he was doing well now. Although, a tiny voice reminded Jaime, he knew what Targaryens did to their advisors when they grew unsatisfied.

Jaime had been on the road for five days when he stopped at the tavern. Five days, it turned out, was enough time for a man to go through all sorts of existential crises. He had argued with himself silently for most of the ride, though it didn’t seem to help his psyche much. Of course, he had pondered the inevitable: was leaving the right thing to do? But that hadn’t been too difficult a qualm to shut down. It didn’t matter if leaving was the right thing to do, because it was the _only_ thing to do. He had sworn to go north. This, he reasoned, saved him some headaches over morality. Besides, it wasn’t fleeing if he was running towards something, right?

Regardless of whether it was an act of evasion or of valor, he _had_ left, and he hadn’t taken much food with him. So to a tavern it was. It was a dingy place, made from old, damp stone, which seemed almost to repel all natural light. Though it was still afternoon, torches hung inside. Jaime eased his way up to what seemed to be the main counter. 

“What’ll it be?” a gruff man asked from the other side. He was all north: beard grown long, eyebrows in a permanent furrow, prominent nose an alarming shade of red. Jaime felt like a fish on a boat.

“Loaf of bread,” he said, letting his mouth decide for him. The man only grunted and moved to fetch the order.

A square hand nudged Jaime’s arm, and he glanced over. An older man with a long face was peering up at him. 

“You hear about that Targaryen wench, come up through here?” he asked, voice rougher than whetstone. 

Jaime paused, weighed his options. He ended up shaking his head no.

The man huffed out what might have been a laugh and turned back to his cup. “Well, she came through not long ago. Been the talk of the town since. Didn’t actually come through the town, mind you-- but some of our lads saw her and her army.” He took a swig from his cup. “Where you headed?”

“North,” Jaime said vaguely. The man didn’t seem to take it personally.

“So’s she. Avoid Winterfell, if you’re taking advice,” he said sagely. Jaime considered taking a seat as he waited for the barkeeper to wrap his bread up, but decided against it. There might be something to be gained from listening to locals, he figured.

“I thought she was the dragon queen,” he said, consciously smoothing his voice over to sound like a northerner. “Did those boys see any dragons?”

“Aye, they did,” the man affirmed. Before Jaime could think of anything else to ask, the barkeeper was coming back to the counter with a package of thick fabric, bundled tightly. Jaime kept his mouth shut and paid the man. He then made to leave the tavern quick as he could without drawing attention-- he needed to be recognized here about as badly as he needed someone to cut off his other hand. But just as he was touching the grain of the door, the main sitting at the bar called one last thing out to him, voice ringing out across the room.

“You be careful up north, boy. She’s ruthless as her father, and twice as ambitious.”

Jaime swallowed.

“So they say,” he replied. He pushed the door open and got onto his horse, not even bothering to pack the loaf of bread up before riding off away from the tavern.

+++

It took two weeks on the road for Jaime to realize that he was scared.

Two weeks, the occasional village, and an immense amount of time alone. He had avoided all the main roads, so it was hard to tell, but at some point he had realized that he was halfway to Winterfell, and the observation had hit him like a sack of bricks: he was very, very scared. And for a seemingly endless supply of reasons. He was scared to have ended things with Cersei. He had been with her his whole life-- never even so much as kissed another woman-- and now he was on his own. He didn’t regret ending it, but still, it was a change that was impossible not to notice.

What’s more, he was scared to even arrive at Winterfell. A place where everyone present hated him, and closer than ever to the great undead threat beyond the wall. Not to mention their queen and her dragons. He had seen a dragon once in his life, and once was more than enough. 

But his brother would be there. He missed Tyrion terribly. There was no other person with whom he could speak so easily. Except-- 

It was a good thing Jaime’s horse was going at a simple trot, because had she been galloping, he would have lost control of her. Very stupidly, he remembered that Sansa Stark would be at Winterfell, and with her-- Lady Brienne. Somewhere in his mind he had known it, of course. But he had not considered its implications until now. Brienne, who he had not seen since the meeting in the dragon pit, where they barely spoke anyway. Brienne, who had been the subject of his dreams so many times since they’d last seen each other that it was almost shameful. 

He shook his head, embarrassed in spite of himself. There was much he would have to deal with before he could even speak to her, if she even wanted to speak to him too. 

There was Ned’s bastard, too: Jon Snow, whose life sounded more like a fairytale to Jaime than anything else. The northerners respected him, Jaime knew that much. They would follow him into battle. But the uncertainty of it all still left Jaime a little uneasy. Not about Jon’s leadership-- he knew somewhere deep down that if Jon Snow was anything like his father, then he was a good man. Although, if Daenerys Targaryen was anything like hers…

Jaime’s fingers tightened involuntarily around the reins of his horse. Whatever he found in Winterfell, it would be better than staying in King’s Landing, and besides, he had sworn an oath.

A small voice at the back of his head reminded him that he had broken oaths before. But almost as soon as it entered his mind, his thoughts went unbidden again to Brienne of Tarth, and guilt’s sticky fingers clutched at his insides. He could break no more oaths; this he knew with certainty. He would not permit himself to.


	5. Chapter 5

Jaime looked out across the yard. It was absolutely covered with snow: more than he had ever seen in his life, and likely more than he would ever see again. He started at the sound of someone clearing their throat to his right, and glanced over.

“You had some business with Lady Brienne, I take it?” Tyrion offered, making an inquisitive face. Jaime cracked a smile.

“...Yes. Sorry about that,” he said, turning to face his brother. Tyrion only shook his head and moved to lean on the short stone barrier before them.

“I hope whatever that was went well.”

Jaime pursed his lips before taking a seat on the barrier. “I think it did.”

“You think?” Tyrion probed. 

Jaime looked at him for a moment, eyes narrowed against the harsh winter air. He considered telling his brother right then and there about his feelings for Brienne, but they were complicated, and there was too much he was unsure about. He settled instead on changing the subject.

“It’s far too cold in Winterfell,” he said.

Tyrion hummed and turned his body a little to look out at the yard. Mildly, he said, “It’s not going to get any warmer.”

“No. But I’m too old for this kind of weather.”

“Gods, it’ll be your forty-third name day soon, won’t it?” Tyrion asked, eyebrows furrowing. The truth of the statement seemed almost to surprise him.

Jaime smiled. “Forty-fourth.”

“Ah, right. That explains the gray in your beard,” Tyrion commented, giving a chuckle. 

+++

Jaime stopped some thirty paces behind her. Watched her round a corner and disappear into the hall. Shook his head, which had started feeling fuzzy with ale halfway through their drinking game. As always, it was too little, too late, but he realized-- Tyrion hadn’t refilled his cup more than once.

Being the stupidest Lannister still meant you were smarter than a lot of people. 

Jaime half-turned in the dark, empty hallway, looking sidelong at the door he’d walked through moments before. A faint orange glow wafted through its cracks. Tyrion wasn’t drunk. Not now, and not a few minutes ago, when he’d asked Brienne if she had ever slept with anyone. Seven hells, Jaime had a far lower tolerance than both of his siblings, and even he wasn’t drunk. A cup and a half wouldn’t have done it for Tyrion. 

So Tyrion wasn’t drunk. Sure, he’d never been one to tiptoe around subjects such as maidenhood even while sober, but he’d _acted_ drunk. There must have been a reason. The cogs in Jaime’s head seemed to pain him as they turned, and he shook it once more. Somewhere a door clanged shut. 

Jaime’s feet took him forward, tracing Brienne’s steps until the corner she had rounded, at which point he continued forward. There were about five and a half years in Tyrion’s life that he had not been able to outwit Jaime, and those were the five years before his sixth name day. After that, it was like a switch had flipped-- if Tyrion was nothing else in this world, he was clever. He had to have a goal. He _always_ had a goal. 

Jaime realized that he was walking subconsciously to Winterfell’s kitchens. They would be close to vacant now, as all the food had long since gone out to the great hall. That was good. Jaime still needed to think, and he did it best alone. 

What did Tyrion have to gain by knowing if Brienne was a virgin? More importantly, what did he have to lose? What was his stake in the matter? Jaime’s thoughts derailed for a moment, and looking back, he remembered-- Brienne hadn’t drank. And if it was only because she was embarrassed as a highborn lady, that made perfect sense, but if--

Jaime stopped again, a sharp huff of breath escaping his lips. In one clarifying moment, all the variables and details crashed together to form a brilliant tapestry of truth. Tyrion hadn’t asked the question for himself, whatever that would have meant. 

He’d asked it for Jaime. 

Jaime suddenly felt like there was too much air in his lungs. He let another long breath out, his chest heaving a little. His hand clenched up. Thoughts came rushing to him then, one after the next, faster as they went: Tyrion knew that Brienne meant something to Jaime. He knew Jaime hadn’t really planned to survive past the battle against the Night King’s army. He knew Jaime had only ever been with one woman, only ever had to court one woman, and hadn’t even done much of the courting. He knew the ale gave everyone in the great hall plausible deniability, including himself. He knew Jaime wasn’t going to start anything, and that Brienne wouldn’t either. He knew something Jaime didn’t, otherwise he wouldn’t have spoken so brashly. He knew something Jaime didn’t. _He knew something Jaime didn’t._

Jaime felt a faint and strange giddiness.

He started walking again, making it quickly to the kitchens-- his breath seemed to come in odd halted huffs, like he’d forgotten how to do it properly. He supposed he might as well have. The unfamiliar feelings bounced around crazily within his chest, making it feel tight and restricted. No, not unfamiliar, but… different. Like the next stage of something he had been feeling for a long time. 

The kitchen was entirely empty, save for one bonneted woman. Her clothes were very northern, a different style than Jaime was used to, but her station was still immediately obvious-- a septa. Her back was turned to him.

He stumbled forward, almost tripping over his own feet in his haste. Silently berating himself, he made his way over to the woman, legs thankfully behaving this time. When he cleared his throat, she turned her head to regard him with kind, old eyes.

“Seven blessings, septa. The meal was very well cooked,” he said, already feeling awkward. She smiled at him.

“I did not cook it, milord. But your earnesty is appreciated.”

Jaime flushed a little, but managed a quick laugh. “Ah, well… thank you. I was wondering if you… are there any more bottles of ale I could take out with me?”

“Of course. Come, follow me,” the old woman said easily, leaving her half-finished embroidery on the counter and heading towards a nearby cupboard. Jaime followed close behind her. When they got to it, she pulled the doors open with small, withered hands, and reached within.

“Most of what’s left is the lesser quality, I’m afraid,” she remarked, squinting at the bottle she’d taken out. “Although we have plenty of wine and mead, milord, if that suits you.”

A soft smile warmed Jaime’s face before he could stop it. “On second thought, wine is better. I’ll take whatever you can spare.”

The septa looked at him for a long moment before smiling herself. Jaime thought he imagined a knowing glint in her eye. Still smiling, she reached to the back of the cupboard.

“Take this; it’s Dornish. And not too sour, either,” she said, handing him an especially fine bottle. She closed the cupboard doors and patted the next one over. “Cups are in this one.”

Jaime opened his mouth to say something else, but she was already walking back to her seat by the counter. He pursed his lips and went to the second cupboard over, tucking the wine under his right arm to take out two sturdy cups. As he walked back to the door, he mumbled an embarrassed ‘thank you’ to the old septa, and then he was alone once more. 

+++

He was two cups in, and growing more unsure by the moment. 

After the septa had given him wine, he’d hesitated to go to Brienne. In all honesty, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He couldn’t very well show up to her door with wine, two cups, and no plan-- that was a fool’s mission. And yes, he had always been a bit of a fool, but gods be good, he was trying to outgrow that. 

So he’d made a detour and found an empty seat in the armory. He figured it was one of the only places people _wouldn’t_ be tonight. Luckily, he was right. 

Two cups in, and yes, two cups wasn’t much, but he’d already had ale at the feast. Besides, the Dornish wine was strong-- he wasn’t hellishly drunk, but it wouldn’t be long now if he kept this up.

He went over his thoughts again. Yes, Tyrion had to know something Jaime didn’t. Tyrion had to have set that up for a reason. But there were many men in the north, and many months since Jaime had last seen Brienne. Plenty of women, too, like Tyrion had said. Perhaps Jaime was making it all up, constructing something in his mind built on a foundation of hope and friendly looks. Not to mention that wildling-- whatever his name was. The red-haired one who had slept with a giant, or something to that effect. He was a strange one. Jaime hadn’t _thought_ Brienne had shown interest in the man, but what if that was because they had already slept together and she had simply moved on? What if they had been together, as more than man and woman? Jaime’s head spun with the mental math.

But then another thought gripped him, and he stood with enough force to knock the small table forward a few centimeters. She had seen him follow her out of the great hall, and she hadn’t done anything to stop him. They had looked eye to eye for a moment. Gods, that had been hours ago now! Jaime whisked the wine off the table, corked it, and tucked it under his right arm again. With another swipe he took up the two cups, and like a loose arrow, he went off.

It took him a few wrong turns to remember where the right hall was, but he figured it out eventually. Somewhere along the way from the armory to the hall that held Brienne’s bedchamber, though, something curious had happened: Jaime had realized that he no longer cared about possibilities. Yes, he was drunk, but he felt sure of himself now in a way that wasn’t due to wine. It was a firm decision. They had fought the living dead and survived, and now they had naught else to do but live. Perhaps Brienne wouldn’t share his feelings, perhaps she would. He would never know if he didn’t ask her. 

Finally, he was at her door, and his feelings had reached a peak. He could almost feel fire in his veins. Holding the cups awkwardly, he knocked on the dark wood with the knuckles of his left hand and waited, but it was hardly a moment. 

The door opened and his heart stopped. 

There stood Brienne, illuminated from the side by an unseen fire, wearing her trousers and a simple, thin sleeping shirt. She looked puzzled. She also looked beautiful. More than beautiful; she looked like moonlight incarnate. He felt grubby in comparison, with his winter-darkened hair and untrimmed, gray-tinged beard. His body screamed at him to turn around and walk the other way. Instead, he spoke. 

“You didn’t drink.”


	6. Chapter 6

Jaime was gently tugged back to consciousness by a sound he knew very well: the clanking of armor. He blinked blearily a few times and shifted in the bed, having to move the furs a little with his arm to see past them. The dying fire on the far side of the room gave just enough illumination for him to see Brienne taking her armor off. His eyes shifted to her pack, which was sitting on the table-- she must have just barely returned. He propped himself up on his elbows. 

“Welcome back,” he said, voice sounding thick with sleep even to him. She glanced in his direction, still untying a bracer.

“I woke you up,” she said, only loud enough for the sound to travel the length of the room. “Sorry. The trip ended early.”

Jaime watched her tug the bracer off and set it on the chair with the rest of the armor that she’d already removed. Her fingers worked quickly on another knot. He considered getting up to help her for a brief moment, but he struggled untying his own shirt some days, and besides-- he was _very_ comfortable.

“That’s alright. I only just went to bed, I think. Any trouble?”

Brienne shook her head. “No, it all went quite well,” she said absently. It occurred to him that she was likely exhausted. She slipped the last of her armor off and made to arrange it into a neater pile, but Jaime motioned for her to come over to the bed before she could begin. She did so, walking over to his side of the bed and leaning over him. As soon as she was within reach, he wrapped his arms around her torso and pulled her in for a kiss. 

“Jaime, I have to put my things away,” she said, though she made no move to free herself from his embrace. He couldn’t keep his mouth from smiling. 

“Tomorrow,” he whispered.

“Tomorrow I’ll have even more work to do,” she reminded him.

“Then I’ll put it away for you. Tomorrow morning.”

A brief exhale of laughter escaped her lips, and one of her hands came to rest pleasantly at the point where his neck met his shoulder, her thumb barely ghosting across the line of his jaw.

“Did you miss me?” she asked, eyes twinkling like the waters of her ancestral home even in the dim light. Jaime grinned.

“For a single day?” he asked, letting out a chuckle of his own.

Brienne’s voice was teasing. “Yes, for a single day.”

Jaime kissed her forehead. “I did.” Another kiss to her cheek. “I grew so pathetic that I had to write it out on paper for when you returned.” One last kiss placed on her other cheek. 

She laughed again, this time relaxing further into his arms and where she sat on the bed. 

“You’re just teasing.” She sounded disbelieving. Jaime would have felt embarrassed, especially considering the things which he’d actually written in the note-- he was used to keeping such saccharine emotion so deep within that only he could ever know it was there-- but it was almost as if some piece of his brain had been reworked entirely. He felt he might never be embarrassed again, so long as Brienne was nearby. All the silly things he could say seemed far less silly when she smiled like that.

“Really, I wrote it,” was all he ended up saying. “Full of the sweetest things you could imagine.”

Her eyes, crinkling prettily at the corners, watched his lips. “You’re a fool.”

“I am,” he agreed, placing another gentle kiss at the edge of her mouth.

“Then I suppose I ought to read it,” Brienne said, pulling her face back from his ever so slightly. “This letter of yours.”

Jaime broke into a full grin.

“Damn the bloody letter,” he said, and in one movement pulled her into the bed with him. She rolled a little as she fell, laughing heartily, and Jaime reached one arm across her body, sealing the decision with a kiss to her lips. Her fingers eased their way into his hair just before they pulled away from each other, faces still almost close enough to touch. 

“I love you,” he said. Brienne’s voice was warm when she spoke back.

“I love you, too.”

+++

Stray cats were partial to Jaime’s golden hand. This was something he had realized almost immediately upon entering Winterfell only a week or so earlier. Whether it was the color or the shine (or perhaps the smell?) that attracted them, he still couldn’t tell, but he had learned to expect the occasional feline nose rubbing up against his prosthetic fingertips. Of course, they would always dart away when he tried to pet them with the hand that actually worked, but--

“Jaime,” a voice broke into his thoughts. He turned slightly to find its source.

“Tyrion,” he responded, the name feeling pleasant as it left his lips. The note in his voice was one of surprise; he thought his brother had already started south. “What are you still doing here?”

“Packing up a few last things for the journey,” Tyrion said, one hand tugging absently at the hem of his thick tunic. The corner of Jaime’s mouth upturned ever so slightly. He had yet to see a Lannister adjust well to northern clothing. “And I wanted to talk with you.”

Jaime eyed him. “What about?”

“A private matter.”

Tyrion’s tone was quite serious. It didn’t seem terribly urgent, though, and Jaime's mind kept willfully calm as he stood. “Follow me,” he said, turning to start up the steps he had been sitting on, “we can speak alone in Brienne’s room.”

Jaime could hear Tyrion’s light footsteps close behind him. “It’s still only Ser Brienne’s room?”

Warmth crept into Jaime’s cheeks. After a long moment and a handful of steps, he said, “That’s not my decision to make.”

Tyrion didn’t press the matter further, but even without glancing back, Jaime could practically feel the smirk on his younger brother’s face.

Brienne’s room was empty when they arrived, just as Jaime expected-- she had never been the type to sit around in one place all day. His mind absently lingering on thoughts of her, Jaime closed the heavy wooden door and gestured for them to sit at the small table in front of the fireplace. When they sat, Tyrion looked thoughtfully at the table’s wood grain.

“I wanted to give you something before I left,” he said, voice giving an impression that his words were being chosen very carefully. “It was given to me a long time ago, and I’ve cherished it, but now I’m… for the past few years, I’ve wanted to give it to you. And I suppose now I can.”

Jaime’s eyes narrowed of their own accord. Something felt wrong about this, but the sensors in Jaime’s brain were not telling him to worry, not activating fight-or-flight-- but then, he supposed he had always been the dull one. Tyrion could easily manipulate him, if the whim arose. 

Tyrion held out a fist, and Jaime instinctually brought his left hand up to meet it, in perfect time to catch the object released. As soon as Jaime saw what Tyrion had dropped into his hand, his heart stilled.

It was a necklace. Dainty, strung on a thin golden chain, with a pendant of saturated green gemstone. Jaime recognized it because, years ago, he had been the one to buy it. 

He could not tear his eyes away from it. 

“Who gave you this?” he heard himself say, his voice sounding as flat as the blade of a sword. Tyrion’s figure shifted in the periphery of his vision. 

“Myrcella.” Tyrion’s voice was soft, and Jaime understood very well why he had seemed so serious earlier. “The morning before she left for Dorne. She said she wanted me to take care of it while she was away, so that she’d have to come see me again.”

Jaime blinked sudden moisture out of his eyes. He ran his thumb gently over the stone, which still shone brightly. It seemed like several lifetimes ago that he’d found the necklace. It was in a wealthy little port town-- he had been on the road back to King’s Landing then, after having been away on some of Robert’s business. He hadn’t even been looking for presents to bring back, but the necklace caught his eye on the edge of a local vendor’s stall, and he knew from a single glance that he had to buy it. The green of the gemstone was almost identical to that of his daughter’s eyes. After that he’d made sure to bring gifts back for the boys, too, but it was Myrcella who had clung tightly to his leg when he returned, thanking him over and over again for finding her such a beautiful necklace. Of course, Tyrion knew all this.

His voice sounded strained as it came out, even to him. “She meant for you to have it, Tyrion.”

“At the time, yes. But I’m not her father,” Tyrion said gently. “Besides, she was only letting me hold onto it. It belongs to you.”

An image forcefully entered Jaime’s mind: a girl, barely old enough to decide she was in love, choking up blood. His hand twitched involuntarily.

“Thank you,” Jaime finally said, carefully slipping the necklace into one of the pouches tied to his belt. His voice sounded very small. Looking at his brother once more, he added, “That was kind of you.”


	7. Chapter 7

It would never work for him. He was soaked through to the bone, past the bone, deep into the cavity that held his heart-- his frightened heart, which to him had always felt more rabbit than lion. He could never escape Cersei while she lived. She could leave him alone for a hundred million years, and he would still never truly escape her.

He didn’t know if he could live with that or not, but he supposed he would never have to find out. Someone had to kill Cersei. And it wasn’t a personal thing, it wasn’t a vendetta for the way she had treated him, it was for every living creature in the realm. If Cersei lived, the seven kingdoms would turn to ash, no matter who ended up on the throne.

Jaime stared hard into the fire. He was painfully aware of the woman sleeping soundly behind him. It struck him then in a miserable sort of way: he would have to leave in the night, and it would have to be now, else Brienne would follow him to her death.

He felt hollow, like he’d rotted out inside. If he were to strike another fire and somehow shine it within himself, he knew he’d see nothing there, no more than a gaping chasm or the mouth of a toothless animal. 

_A toothless lion,_ he thought. The bitterness deepened.

He knew he was wasting time. The longer he sat waiting, knowing full well that his heart was behind him, the greater the risk grew. He tried to call up memories of the honorable Ser Arthur Dayne. They did not come. It was as though the man had never existed; of course he had, but all the same, his honor meant nothing to Jaime now. The thought of it did not pluck the chords in Jaime’s soul as it once did. Viciously cold though he sat before a fire, Jaime thought, _I cannot do it. I have never been honorable, and here’s the final rotten proof: I cannot slay the beast._

A quiet memory tugged at his attention, and his eyes turned downward to his false hand. The firelight seemed to illuminate it harshly-- the gold almost looked green, and he noticed some dried mud along its rounded edge; It had been too long since he’d last shined it.

Born holding his sister’s foot. His nursemaid had said that.

He hoped, with a bitter taste in his mouth, that it had been his right hand.

But then, something else: his mind tumbled, caught itself in half a spin, evened out. Presented him with a memory he hadn’t thought of in a long time. Of course, he would never be able to remember how it ended-- he knew what happened, and exactly how, but his mind did not hold the images. Still, the beginning was as clear as though it had only been weeks ago. To this day he could not name what had compelled him then, the night he lost his hand, but what was certain was that it had nothing to do with Cersei. Cersei had not stood in his way that night, metaphorically or otherwise. He hadn’t even been thinking of her. He simply could not stomach the thought of such mindless violence, and so he stopped it. Truly, it was more luck than anything else. But the way Brienne had looked at him when the men had brought her back to her chains… there was a feeling he’d gotten in that moment that he hadn’t felt since his boyhood. He’d felt like a knight.

And that hadn’t been honorable, had it? That hadn’t been good of heart or gentle of soul. He’d done it because he saw no other option. And yet, something had changed within him after. Something Brienne had been there to see.

He recalled her words, what she said at his trial: that he was a good man. That she would vouch for him.

His heart weighed heavily in his chest, but there was something else there now too. He stood as lightly as he could manage and pulled his cloak on, his gloves, his boots, took up the single small pouch of items to his name, eased the door open just wide enough to slip out. That which seemed impossible mere moments before was now happening without his direction. He thanked the gods, the seven and however many more, for the padded silence of northern winter boots. Before long, he was at the stables. 

Once, he had killed a monarch for a city’s worth of people. Now he would have to do the same for the whole realm. And he’d known it all along, possibly even known it as a child in some small corner of his brain, because the truth was this: he was perhaps the only person capable of killing his sister, just as he had once been the only one capable of loving her. 

There was simply no other way for the story to end.


	8. Chapter 8

In a rush, he pushed his hands around her throat, one flesh and one glinting metal, his eyes squeezing out tears as his grip squeezed the breath from his sister’s lungs. She struggled on the hard ground, all ten fingers clawing at his face in horrific desperation. This was it. This was all there was. Born holding his sister’s foot, and it didn’t matter which damn hand it had been, because now both of them were choking her to death. Her writhing grew stronger underneath him and he shuffled with her. She spat something at him, some words, but he didn’t hear them, couldn’t understand them anyway. Somehow in their struggle, he managed to pin one of her arms under his knee, and her face was growing paler-- her airway nearly flattened under the full weight of his upper body-- and Jaime hacked out a sob, watching the life very truly drain from her bloodshot eyes.

It was an eternity; it was less than a second. Either way, he held her to the ground long after she stopped moving. The twitching ended not long after that. Her eyes, unseeing but not colder than they had been in life, bored into his own.

Another sob tore through his body and he fell back away from her, backside landing with a jolt on the stone floor. And then he was weeping, full-force, as he had not wept since he was a little boy. He could not stop it, nor could he look away from her-- the sister, the lover, the mother of his children, all three dead in one fell swoop, and by his own hand. Surely the seven would punish him for this, if they existed after all. 

But it wasn’t quite that simple, was it? Even as he bawled inconsolably, there was a small, untouched portion of his mind which spoke true: she had been terrible. She would have only done worse if he hadn’t killed her. All her crosses he had to bear, two children whose deaths she had blamed him for and another she ignored, all the manipulation and degradation, and that was only how she had treated him, her twin brother, not to mention the millions of people she had doomed as queen or done worse to. 

Jaime felt as though he might be sick. With how hard he was crying, he supposed it was physically likely. Instead, he stood, and tried to breathe easier. The movement sent spikes of pain through his entire midsection-- his adrenaline was fading, and he knew he might very well succumb to the wounds Euron gave him. But that was unimportant. 

King’s Landing was on fire, the castle was crumbling around him, but he’d done it. He had defeated the monster at the end of the storybook. Hopefully, he’d saved the damsel in distress, though she was much too far away for him to know. There was one thing he had decided, though, and it sat well with him: to have honor was to let it destroy you. The thought gave him solace, at least. Perhaps his story belonged in the white book yet.

Tears dying down, Jaime could not bear to look at the body directly anymore, but he did one last thing. He tugged the straps of his false hand loose and pulled the thing off, holding it up for a moment in the faint sun. It may as well have been fool’s gold.

He dropped the prosthetic where he stood above Cersei’s body. Turning, he began back the way he’d come, steps staggering half due to the castle’s instability and half due to his own bleeding sides. 

The journey seemed longer this time, even bearing in mind the punctuation of each stop he had to make to lean against a wall and steady his breathing. He counted himself lucky that he already knew the way-- his mind was growing foggier with nearly each pace he took. His thoughts repeated themselves sequentially in an attempt to keep his focus: stairs, corridor, chamber, corridor, cellars, bank, boat. It would not be much longer now, if he could keep his consciousness. 

Stumbling as he went, he kept his right arm clutched to his abdomen and trailed the other along the wall to his left. Going down the steps at such a rate, he was beginning to have trouble balancing, and his feet kept fumbling beneath him, but already he was at the cellar entrance--

He tumbled in through the doorway, a little surprised that he’d kept his footing. There were stones falling here and there all throughout the cellars. Dust was swirling everywhere, too, and as he walked through he couldn’t help coughing. Each wheeze seemed to pierce his wounds anew. Almost as soon as he’d entered the cellars, though, he stopped dead in his tracks. The way he’d come in earlier was blocked off by debris. A few quick glances around the cavern told him that any other ways out were blocked off too. A strange, suffocating feeling grew in his chest, and he hurried over to the closest pile. He wrenched himself up it, climbing to the top, looking anywhere for a gap in the stones-- but there were none. He was getting weaker, and there was no way out. 

In another state, he might have panicked. But now, thoughts clouded already by grief and bodily pain, he slid haphazardly back down the stones until he met with the sandy ground. First he was sitting, but a tumble of rocks came down to his left, and he was thrown down onto his right shoulder. Pain rushed through his body again, but he could not tell if it came from his shoulder’s impact or something else entirely. 

He felt woozy. His head was flat on the ground, as was the rest of him, but he felt for just a moment like he might have been flying, or rolling down a steep hill. He blinked once, then twice. Alarmingly, his ears seemed to go deaf. 

He blinked again, and he was at Casterly Rock, crouched tensely in the short, damp grass. He could feel the shadow of a young tree cooling his back. Strange noises came from behind the wall to his left; he imagined the cooks must have gone mad and started banging pots and pans wildly about the kitchens. It was ceaseless. Just as he was drifting off in thought, a small boy came running into sight. 

“I found you!” the boy cried, stopping closeby. “You can’t keep hiding in the same place or I’ll just find you every time.”

Jaime broke into a grin and straightened up. 

“You’re better at this than me, that’s all,” he said. He could barely hear himself speak over the crashing from the kitchens.

The little boy made a face and plopped down in the grass next to Jaime, hands fumbling idly with the hem of his tunic. His mouth moved again, but the damned clamor was too loud.

“What did you say?” Jaime asked, leaning in towards the boy. The boy’s mouth moved once more, but it was to no avail. Jaime’s head pounded in time with the banging, and he closed his eyes, one hand raising to rub at his temple. The pain in his skull was very quickly the only thing he could bear to focus on.

Jaime’s eyes fluttered open. Again, he was laying on the ground. Somewhere nearby there was the sound of a large stone hitting the ground. 

He tried to push himself up with his left arm, but the mere attempt made his head swim painfully. He felt a warmth trickle down his temple and an image came to his mind: Euron Greyjoy lunging towards him. 

Of its own accord, his bare stump searched along his side until it came to rest on damp fabric. Strangely, the wound didn’t hurt-- or was it two wounds? More? He couldn’t remember. His head ached terribly, even worse than when he’d landed on it during a battle some years back and couldn’t remember hardly a thing for two weeks afterwards. It seemed to scream deafeningly in his ears each time his heart dared to beat. Weakly, he turned his head to look around the cavern.

It was too much, though. The movement sent pain down his neck, spreading instantly throughout the rest of his body like the infection of a forest fire. His mind dulled with the pain, and his eyes fell closed once again.

Now he was back in King’s Landing, the intact King’s Landing, sitting out by the shore. The sky looked funny, but it was pleasant enough. He felt that he could almost even smell the sea breeze. There was a goblet in his good hand, and Brienne was sitting to his right. 

“Why did we come to King’s Landing?” he asked her, the words coming slowly, as though he were underwater. 

“Podrick wanted to become a knight,” she said plainly. Her voice was strange and tinny.

“Oh,” Jaime replied, though he did not understand. Surely the boy could have been knighted at-- wherever they had been before. He went to sip from the goblet in his hand, but his mouth filled with something solid and grainy, and the world slipped away from him again, quick as it came.

Jaime came to, spitting out dust and bits of rock. He knew this couldn’t be good, slipping between dreams and wakefulness like some kind of rapid foreign dance, but he could not will himself to feel alarmed. It was as though he was observing himself through a warped window. The keep above the cellar couldn’t hold, surely. Its foundation had been falling since before he’d killed Cersei, and Gods only knew how long ago that had been. It was possible that he had been lying there for a full day, or even more, he figured. He could not hold onto his reality long enough for time to have any true meaning.

He coughed again, and though his lungs had been unharmed, he couldn’t seem to take in enough air. It was as though some great huge animal was sat right on his chest. He squirmed a little at the thought, though he could not muster the energy to do much else. 

Jaime could not focus enough to be certain, but he had some vague notion that there were people he ought to be worrying about. Maybe his baby brother; Tyrion was always getting into trouble. Jaime exhaled hard and tried to regroup his thoughts. 

His fingers were sticky. Some part of his mind realized that he had lost quite a lot of blood, but again, persistently, it didn’t seem to matter. He couldn’t seem to care. Tiredly, he wondered if he could choose whatever dream he would be flung into next. Perhaps it was worth a try. He closed his eyes.

Another flurry of rocks came down nearby. Jaime’s body flinched as the ground shook with the impact, but his eyes stayed shut. He had never liked the north, but on this night he would dream of Winterfell: he would dream of swords, and rivers, white horses, stray cats. Fresh loaves of bread that never seemed to end no matter how many bites you took from them. Babbling brooks and trees older than the iron throne; necklaces that glittered, seas that shone with the light of the sun. Septas and storybooks and glowing fireplaces. People cheering and crashing cups of ale together because they had something worth celebrating. Knights as tall and blonde as ser Duncan, but with eyes of blue and skin soft as summer peaches. Each kiss to lip and cheek and every reason why it was so, why it was allowed to be so, why he could stay here and never leave, never again fight or kill or lose that which he loved. Empty pages filled. Sons and daughters, blood unspilled, whispers swallowed, swords sheathed for good. Lions and bears and a maiden, a knight, a woman who was both, a woman who was everything. 

The red keep collapsed, and Jaime kept dreaming.


End file.
